


Winter Mint

by wayfared



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 5+1 Things, M/M, Secret Santa, pure fluff, that one Extra gum commercial
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 19:03:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17167610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wayfared/pseuds/wayfared
Summary: Keith has a bad habit of chewing gum and never bothering to buy any of his own. Luckily, Lance has caught on. Otherwise known as the five times Lance shares his gum with Keith, and one time Keith shares with Lance (and all the wrappers he should have thrown away).





	Winter Mint

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is a 5+1 fic based off the Extra gum commercial. It’s also Christmas themed for Secret Santa, if you squint. This is for the incredible Zen zenstrike, whose words and presence I cherish. Sorry this is a little late for Christmas for you, but I hope you enjoy domestic kind-of-Christmas fluff.
> 
> Edit: I finally edited this! Which means no more sudden tense changes because I wrote this half-asleep. I also changed the rating to Teen Audiences because I realized there's a little more swearing in this than I thought. 
> 
> Also, I wanted to say something else to Zen. Your writing truly inspires me. I tried to conjure a little bit of your style in this piece, from the sort of established relationship to the descriptions. I'm not sure how well I did, but I wanted to try because every time I read your writing it leaves me breathless. I'm thrilled I got you as my Secret Santa giftee, because it feels like I can give a little happy back to you for all the happy you give to me. Thank you, Zen <3.

Keith patted his front pockets. He patted his back pockets. He frowned – this little pout, tugging at the corners of his winter chapped lips, and resigned himself to empty pockets.

Lance watched all this happen from the other side of their table tucked into the corner of the Union, overlooking the January snow whirling outside. Defeated, Keith took again to chewing his lower lip and picked up his pencil for the first assignment of the new semester.

“… and Matt made it look like all my files were wiped as a Christmas joke, because that’s the kind of shit that fucker gets up to,” Pidge said, pushing her glasses back with her pencil eraser.

“Didn’t you do that to him last year?” Hunk asked. Pidge rolled her eyes and poked at him with the pencil.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean he can do it back! Pidge Pranks are copyrighted under U.S. patent laws. Anyway, I can’t believe Professor Weiss already assigned us these many problems.” She tapped numbers into her brick of a calculator and pushed her glasses up again. “Lance, you usually tell us about your Christmas before we even get back. What did you do over break?”

Lance blinked and tore his eyes away from Keith, still chewing his lower lip. He felt his front pocket. Not empty.

“Oh, you know,” Lance said with a lofty air, waving his hand. “The epic McClain-Rodriguez family gathering was epic once again. Tio Nacho brought three chocolate fountains for the Christmas celebrations, and Tia Jessica outfitted all the nieces and nephews with an arsenal of party crackers. I think Veronica wore a paper hat for each drink.”

Hunk snorted and shook his head.

“Ah, the McClain-Rodriguez clan. I wish I could’ve come for New Year’s again this year, but you know how my parents get about missing two years in a row,” he sighed.

Lance shrugged and smiled. “There’s always room for more if you wanna come next year.”

As Pidge frantically pressed more buttons into the calculator, Lance noticed with a start that Keith hadn’t said anything about his winter break. Actually, he had barely said anything at all.

Look. It wasn’t like Lance _needed_ to hear Keith’s voice. It was just that a winter break of late-night phone calls (including one drunken Christmas call no one need repeat. Lance remained adamant his paper hat had brain rearranging properties.) and staring at Keith’s faintly smiling face on his phone background just didn’t do justice to the real thing, hunched over the table across from him and nibbling on the eraser end of his pencil.

Maybe, just maybe, Lance was a little Keith deprived.

He leaned over the table and tugged on the pencil, jolting Keith out of his own head. He glanced up, his wide eyes all surprised and framed by fanning eyelashes, and Lance’s heart only stuttered a little – which might be a world record.

“What did you do over Christmas, Keith?” Lance asked, resting his chin on the palm of his hand.

Keith scrunched his nose and frowned again.

“You should know. You texted me the whole day,” he said.

“For the benefit of the group at large.” Lance gestured to Hunk and Pidge. Keith huffed and relented.

“Stayed on campus,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Went to Shiro and Adam’s for dinner on Christmas, but mostly just… chilled.”

‘Chilled’ was Keith’s way of saying he binged television on the futon shoved into his and Hunk’s tiny dorm and either A, ran ten miles every day or B, consumed a family size bag of chips in a few hours. No in between for Keith. But on Christmas day, Lance did receive a picture of Adam and Shiro conked out on the couch before nine sharing a batch of homemade mulled wine between them.

“I should call Professor Weiss ‘Adam’ in class as a power move,” Pidge grumbled.

“He’ll kill you,” Keith said. And then, to Lance with a lopsided smile, “Those the three chocolate fountains you showed me?”

“Of _course_ ,” Lance laughed. “We’re no Adam and Shiro, but we know how to throw a party.”

“Oh, I’m sure.”

Keith smiled with his eyes, mostly. He did this thing with his eyebrows- - they dipped in the middle, curved up where they scrunched together, and framed the twinkling in his deep black eyes. The first time they met, it was his eyes Lance noticed first (not his hair, like everyone else assumed). Now, at a questionably cleaned table in the corner of the Union, Keith smiled with his eyes.

And chewed the end of his pencil.

“I bet I can get you drunk,” Lance said, resting his hand on top of Keith’s and lowering the pencil from his mouth. Keith raised an eyebrow at the movement.

“Not gonna happen. Shiro raised me in a military household.” Keith glanced down at their hands, and a rush of butterflies exploded down Lance’s arm. He quickly retracted his hand and shoved it into his front pocket instead.

“And that means you gotta let lose once in a while, Keith! Drink something more than mulled wine on Christmas.”

Without waiting for a response, Lance dug the packet of gum from his front pocket and drew out one piece, tossing it in Keith’s direction.

He caught the piece mid-air, and a bigger smile grew on his lip as he realized what was in the center of his palm.

“Spearmint?” he asked.

“Duh,” Lance said.

Keith ducked his head and unwrapped the piece, popping it into his mouth. He carefully re-folded the foil to its original form and tucked it into his pocket.

“Thanks, man,” he said.

Lance threw a wink back, and Keith attempted to blow a bubble in his direction. He failed miserably. The table burst into giggles, and Pidge’s tapping resumed.

 

 

Lance took to carrying gum on his person at all times. Keith, because he tended to forget about himself or his needs, often forgot the moments where he needed a stick to calm his distracted mind. In the middle of the one lecture they shared, Lance would slide a piece across the table, or press it into his palm, or hide it in the spine of his notebook until he glanced down and noticed the tip of his pencil was yet again caught between his canines.

In March, when grass curled over the edges of the sidewalk and the perfume of flowers wafted over campus, Keith and Lance studied alone on the sprawling lawn before their dorm building. The tree boughed with new leaves above them, dappling Keith’s face with an alternating pattern of shadow and soft sunlight. Instead of paying attention to the textbook on his lap, he watched the pattern sway with the light wind. It kept him on his toes; one moment, Keith’s eyes darting over the textbook were obscured by shadow. The next, he squinted as the sun reached him.

It was mighty difficult to manage a crush on your best friend when your best friend sat in the shade of the enormous tree lawn tree and, and…

“You’re not studying, are you?” Lance asked, a teasing lilt to his voice, as he sat himself up on his elbows.

Keith angled his notebook away, biting his lip as he did so.

“You expect me to study when you—it’s this pretty outside?” he scoffed. Lance recognized the consistent swipes of his pen as Keith drawing when bored. While he pouted that Keith wouldn’t reveal to Lance exactly _what_ he drew, he let himself be content just watching the special look of concentration on his eyes.

Until he chewed at his lip, just lightly tugging his bottom lip between his teeth, and Lance’s attention caught on that instead. Not for the first time since they chose their spot, Lance wondered what it would be like instead to press Keith into the grass and tug his bottom lip between his own teeth, to taste spearmint and the cinnamon pack Lance bought on a whim last week.

Keith glanced up, and Lance averted his gaze to the book before him. The text swam before his eyes. He fought to pay attention, but… with a sigh, he resigned himself to wrangling the pack of gum from the front pocket of his backpack and taking out a piece for himself.

“Hold still,” Keith mumbled, barely loud enough for Lance to hear. Lance froze, one hand still on his backpack, and tilted his chin in question.

“Are you drawing _me?”_ Lance asked.

“No, obviously not. I’m trying to draw the tree, and you’re blocking the view,” Keith replied, but his smirk said otherwise.

“Show me!” Lance gasped, scrambling onto his knees.

“No!” Keith squealed, shuffling backwards and clutching the textbook to his chest. Relentlessly, Lance pounced and attempted to pry it away only for Keith to laugh and hold on tighter.

“Keith! You can’t draw me and not show me!”

“Well, now I can’t finish, because you didn’t stay still! So, you’ll never get to see it,” Keith argued.

With a grumble, Lance acquiesced, rolling away from Keith and using his backpack as a pillow.

“You win this round,” he said, lacing his fingers behind his head.

Keith rolled his eyes and stuck his tongue out at Lance. From this angle below him, Keith’s hair – too long at this point, a hairdo Shiro would hack off if he still had any say in Keith’s appearance – fell like a halo around his face.

“Don’t I win every round?”

“Absolutely not!” It was Lance’s turn to scoff.

Keith just grinned again. Wider, since January. Like Lance cracked some secret code and earned himself a bright Keith smile, accessible only on certain levels and with the right key. Lance smiled just as widely back, then scrubbed it off with the back of his hand lest he give himself away.

He’ll tell him one of these days. He’ll tell him how warmth spreads through him when they talk on Facetime until midnight comes and goes, and eventually, when Hunk kicks Keith out, they sit together in the common room, toes touching, and continue talking about anything from Pidge’s latest patented prank to Keith’s childhood before Shiro.

He’ll tell him. For now, he dug the pack of gum out of the grass and finally took out a piece for himself. On second thought (or first), he took out another and held it in the center of his palm for Keith. Keith looked at it for only a moment before curling his fingers over Lance’s palm.

They rested like that for a moment, Keith’s pale hand covering Lance’s tanned one. Keith brushed the callused pad of his thumb over Lance’s hand, then took the piece and let go.

Lance bit the inside of his cheek and glanced away, warmth coursing down from his hand to the rest of his body. When he found the courage to look back and see the pink dusting Keith’s cheeks, it lit anew within him. He watched as Keith smoothed the corners of the foil wrapper, careful to not tear any edges, and tuck it into the first folder of his binder.

“What do you do with those?” Lance asked absently, but Keith only shrugged and picked up his pen.

“Still cinnamon?” He wrinkled his nose.

“Spicy, just like you,” Lance said with a waggle of his eyebrows.

Keith leveled him with a look, then rolled his eyes.

“Hold still this time,” he said. “You have a super weird pointy chin, and I wanna get it right.”

Lance swallowed his reply in favor of watching Keith draw through half-lidded eyes.

He’ll tell him. And a part of him thought Keith might tell him back.

 

 

Adam won the betting pool out of Hunk, Pidge, Allura, _and_ Shiro. It happened on the Sunday before finals week, because both Keith and Lance were dumb enough to not make a move until Keith practically tore his hair out from the roots because of Adam’s lecture and Lance ran out of gum.

This time, Keith was actually studying, a strange occurrence nowadays when his day usually consisted of running in the mornings (half the time with Lance, half the time without because Lance wasn’t a fucking machine like he is), binging Netflix shows on the futon (definitely with Lance, because Lance, too, was avoiding studying), and scrounging around town for the latest new dining spot yet undiscovered by the rest of the campus in their small college town (… also with Lance. What can they say? They’re good company, and so what if Lance fell in love with the way Keith’s eyes lit up every time they stumbled upon a hideaway Japanese takeout restaurant?).

Only Keith and Lance would do this the hard way, beginning with a stupid argument, in a way so conceivably predictable that Adam wrote it down to the phrasing on the cards they placed in the bet.

“No way, I bet it will be sweet. Like, Keith buys him flowers or some nice macaroons, and they have a fairytale relationship like Lance always wanted!” Hunk gushed.

“Absolutely not,” Pidge scoffed. “Lance will try to show him in an extravagant Lance way, like a banner or a cake, and Keith will be too oblivious until Lance tells it to him in words.”

“I like to think they’ll be sweet about it,” Allura said.

“Knowing Keith, maybe not,” Shiro said with a smile.

“I know,” Adam said, pushing his glasses up his nose with a forefinger and thumb on the rim. “They’ll have a fight, like they always do. And the only way Keith gets Lance to shut up is a confession.”

“I hope not!” Hunk gasped.

“Keith will say, ‘Jesus fucking Christ, you moron, why do I like you so much when you act like this?’” Adam steepled his hands in front of him and the others leaned in. “And Lance… will shut up.”

And Adam won the betting pool.

 

 

Keith slammed his hands on the library table, his face pinched in a scowl. That was his last straw, Lance guessed. Lance, poking at his textbook until Keith admitted Teddy Roosevelt was the best Roosevelt president while Keith was _trying_ to last-minute study, was the last fucking straw.

Lance gaped in surprise as Keith rose from his chair. Even as the rage bubbled over, Lance could see it fade from his eyes, replaced with something resigned, something bulldozed by—affection?

“Holy fuck, Lance. Why do I have a crush on you when you’re asking me about the _Roosevelts_ while I’m trying to study?”

Lance’s jaw snapped shut, his eyes wide. And then Keith’s eyes widened, because Lance thinks he just confessed… Like, did Keith just—

“I—what? As in, like, on me?”

Keith sunk back into his chair, a hand clapped over his face. The other students strewn over the library squinted at them for a full ten seconds while Lance fish-mouthed and Keith just… froze.

Lance heard him right, right? His heart hammered against his ribcage, because he _heard him right, right?_ Keith, his best friend, and _Lance’s_ crush, had a crush on him?

“Well,” Keith stuttered after thirty more seconds of Lance staring at him and Keith averting his eyes to his textbook. He ran a nervous hand through his hair, then dropped it into his lap. “Franklin Deleanor Roosevelt introduced the New Deal during the Great Depression, so… I’d say he wins. Bye, Lance.”

Before Lance could move an inch (though he had a strong suspicion he was frozen solid to his chair), Keith gathered his books, dumped them into his backpack, and sprinted away from the table.

“Wait!”

Lance sprang into action, tripping on a tear in the carpet as he ran after Keith.

“Keith, come on! Wait!”

The fucker was fast though, and Lance only caught up to him outside the library entrance, a hand latching onto the back of his shirt and yanking him backwards.

“ _Keith_ ,” Lance panted. Keith crossed his arms stiffly over his chest, but he was unable to school his expression into its usual careful blankness—the careful blankness Lance never let him get away with anyway. Lance straightened up and opened his mouth again. Then opened it, then closed it. “Did you—do you—”

“Drop it,” Keith interrupted, turning his face away. It was then that Lance noticed the furious blush on his cheeks, because he had. He had just confessed.

“Dude,” Lance said, his heart in his throat. He poked Keith hard in the chest. “I was going to confess my crush on you first!”

And now it was Keith’s turn to shut up. His eyebrows furrowed, as if to say, _really? Like, really really?_

 “Yes, really. For real. This was going to be the one thing I won, and you! You did it first!” The hammering of Lance’s heart quickened as he held out a shaky hand, palm up. He could feel the blush burning his cheeks as he mumbled, “I like you, Keith. I really do.”

Keith glanced down at his hand, then back up. His fingers curled tight around the straps of his backpack. Then, inch by inch, he unfurled one hand, lowered it, and let it rest on top of Lance’s. The touch sparked, from the tips of his fingers up his forearm and to the erratic ball of fuzz currently occupying his chest instead of a heart.

Keith took a deep breath and let their fingers intertwine, one between another, like a puzzle piece slotting into place. The last piece in a really fucking difficult puzzle. Like, a thousand-piece puzzle.

His other hand drummed restlessly against the strap of his backpack, and he couldn’t look away from where their hands swung at their sides. That was real. This was real. They looked at each other again, and Lance could see the fear, cloaked in overwhelming affection.

He dug his free, non-sweaty hand into his back pocket and brought out a gum pack.

“Spearmint?” Lance offered.

A soft smile played on the corners of Keith’s lips, and he ducked his head and swiped a piece from Lance.

“Thanks,” he mumbled. “And I can’t believe you tried to make this into a competition.”

“You know me,” Lance said, bumping their shoulders together. Keith tightened his grip on Lance’s hand. “If I knew you would’ve told me you _like_ me over a debate about the best Roosevelt for your U.S. History class, I would’ve done it sooner. With candles, maybe. Roses.”

Keith scoffed and shook his head. “Like that debate actually helped anything.”

“Yeah, well.” Lance smiled crookedly. “I don’t speak softly, but I do carry a big stick.”

“Alright, fuck off.” Keith tugged his hand away, but Lance pulled him right back, and Keith only cackled when he fell into Lance’s chest.

Lance buried his nose into Keith’s silky black hair and held him there, because he still couldn’t quite believe it.

 

 

It was the middle of August, and Lance quite liked to think that, despite its name, winter mint gum suited August.

It tasted cold in all the ways the sweltering heat did not. When Lance woke up in a motel room on the California coast, half-strangled by the octopus called Keith tangled in his limbs and buried into his chest, winter mint tasted like the light scratch of Keith’s nails and the air conditioning laboring to spread a mild breeze through the room.

Half the time, Keith tasted like spearmint. As the months dragged on and Lance’s tastes changed with the season, he tasted like winter mint. Like snow angels and Christmas trees on a hot, humid August morning.

School wouldn’t start for another two weeks. The gang – that is, Hunk, Pidge, Allura, Shiro, Adam, and the two of them – piled into one van and headed West, straight for the beach. Their motel laid a little inland, but in an hour Pidge would barge into the room, demand they gather their swim trunks, and they would all head down to the beach, buckets and towels and boogie boards in tow.

For now, Lance laid here, Keith breathing softly into his chest with the heavy duvet flung onto the floor, thinking of all the ways Keith tasted. Minty, cinnamon-y. At one point, bubblegum.

He smiled into the light filtering weakly through hastily shut curtains. He carded his fingers through Keith’s hair, and Keith grumbled and pressed his nose against Lance. After a few moments, he lifted his head and blinked blearily.

“We’re not home,” he croaked.

“Nope,” Lance said, popping the ‘p’. “We drove seven hours yesterday, and now we’re here. Alone. Because no one wanted to share a room with us.”

“More like Shiro drove seven hours,” Keith grumbled. He dropped his head again, then lifted it and shuffled until he laid his head on the same pillow as Lance.

They had only shared a bed a few times, but in moments like this, cloaked in themselves with only the buzz of the air conditioning to keep them company, it felt like an eternity. An eternity spent staring into gray, violet-flecked eyes, framed by thick dark eyebrows and faint bags carved into porcelain skin. An eternity brushing locks away where they drape across his forehead and into his eyes, tucking them behind his ear and feeling the skin there.

It had been… what? A few months? And it felt like an eternity. A good one. He felt himself smile and feathers more bangs away from Keith’s forehead. Keith wrinkled his nose, then smiled back, that small soft smile he did when he feels shy.

There was only one solution to that. Lance leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead, to the soft skin _there_ —soft no matter how many times Lance chastised him about skin care. Then a kiss to his temple, the tip of his eyebrow, to his high cheekbone, to the delicate skin below his eye, to the tip of his nose. To the length of his jaw, to the sharp corner near his ear, to the earlobe itself. To the corner of his lips. To the giggle that escaped when he did. To the center of his lips, to the chapped bottom and the cupids bow.

Lance pulled away, resting his head on the pillow. Keith wrinkled his nose again.

“Ugh, don’t kiss me when I still have morning breath,” he muttered, but the blush on his cheeks revealed otherwise.

“I don’t mind,” Lance shrugged, letting his thumb brush over Keith’s cheekbone again.

If he could fall in love with anyone, it was this one. Keith on the same pillow as him, with whom he bickered, competed, and kissed when no one and everyone looked.

Lance rolled over and reached below the edge of the bed for his backpack, strewn haphazardly across the floor. He rooted around the pockets until he found the slim paper package of his search and heaved himself back around to face Keith.

“Seriously?” Keith said, raising an eyebrow. Lance’s eyes followed the movement, and he smiled slyly.

“If you won’t kiss me with morning breath, this is quicker _and_ you don’t have to leave the bed.”

“Pidge will make us get out in five minutes anyway,” Keith sighed.

Still, when Lance held out the package, he took a piece, unwrapped it, and began chewing with a roll of his eyes. As Lance watched, he carefully folded the foil wrapper into its original shape – four corners, long and rectangular, not a single tear to see – and set it on the nightstand.

“I swear you have something about wrappers,” Lance said, propping himself onto his elbows.

“Nah,” Keith shrugged. “I have something about you. Are you going to kiss me or not?”

Lance mimicked his roll of the eyes, but he already leaned in for a kiss.

Three months, and, yeah, he was pretty sure this was the real deal. Delicately re-structured foil wrappers and all.

 

 

“Do you think we can do cloud gazing at night?” Lance asked, craning his neck to see the night sky swimming slowly above them. Pinpricks of light bathed in a pool of black, brightened by light pollution and interrupted by the trees lining the park path—and the clouds swathing patches in pitch black.

“No,” Keith snorted. “What’s that? Oh, that’s a black blob. Look, there’s another black blob.”

“Okay, okay, I get it, you fun-sucker.” Lance elbowed him in the side, maneuvering the hand weaved into his to do so. “No cloud gazing at night, because you’re boring and have no imagination.”

“I’m not boring!” he said indignantly, straightening his back. Lance lolled his head to the side to level the scarf-and-beanie clad Keith with an unimpressed stare. “Just because I don’t have a Monster’s worth of energy every day doesn’t mean I’m boring. It means I work out, and you sleep in every day and have to get it out some other way.”

Lance didn’t grace him with a reply and returned to staring at the sky as they lazily meandered through the park.

It was a date night. They did these once or twice a week, picking a day for Hunk to babysit the hamster back at their apartment (in case the fucker got out of his cage, which happened a _lot_ more than they wanted to admit) and finding another shitty hole-in-the-wall ramen place to try out. Or, after finding all the ramen places, rotating between all of them and arguing in each about who would pay the bill today.

They usually split the bill.

Tonight, stomachs full, they strolled as quietly as Keith and Lance could through the park besides the block of stores, sprawling acres of trees heavy with fall leaves separated by lakes and winding paths. The trees boughed over the paths, and leaves intermittently floated like black dots into their vision and to the ground.

“I don’t like this flavor,” Keith said offhandedly, swinging their hands where they were clasped between them.

“What? You don’t like raspberry pie, the best flavor the Balmera Gas Station has to offer?” Lance turned up his nose and set his shoulders, to which Keith rolled his eyes and giggled.

“Give me mint.” He took back his hand, only to hold it out expectantly. With a dramatic sigh, Lance took out the mint packet and pressed a piece into Keith’s palm. Keith looked at it expectantly, then turned up his own nose. “This is the wrong kind?”

“Well, it’s gum,” Lance said. “Are you questioning your gum dealer?”

“No, it doesn’t have a foil wrapper,” he explained. “It’s just paper.”

Lance stopped walking and tilted his head in question. After a few paces, Keith noticed and halted, looking back expectantly.

“Since when did you get picky about foil versus paper wrappers?” Lance asked.

“None of your business,” Keith said. “But next time you go to the store—”

“Foil wrapper, I got it.” Lance smiled crookedly and caught up with Keith, lacing their fingers again. “Though I don’t know _why—”_

“You’ll find out,” Keith hummed, smoothing out the corners of the paper wrapper.

“… When?” Lance ducked his head and raised his eyebrows at Keith, who only smiled slyly and looked to the clouds.

“Would you look at that?” Keith said, pointing upwards. “It’s a Christmas tree in the clouds.”

Lance squinted upwards and caught sight of a cloud drifting through the sky. Sure enough, the puffs shaped a triangle, something that could be vaguely construed as a tree if someone _really_ tried.

Something burst and fizzed in Lance’s stomach at the mention of _Christmas_ in particular, though. He didn’t forget the last Christmas—staying up late with Keith on the phone before either knew they were both head over heels for the other, reaching for his phone whenever it buzzed to the point where Veronica teased him near to death about whoever was on the other line.

But this year. This year, Lance had a boyfriend. This year, whoever was on the other line held his hand in the brisk night in a park, biding their time together until Hunk pleaded for them to come back to the dorm because the hamster’s gotten out and hidden behind the wardrobe _again_.

“Hey,” Lance whispered, slipping his hand out of Keith’s and draping it his arm across his shoulders instead. “So, Tio Nacho is bringing four chocolate fountains to the McClain-Rodriguez Christmas Spectacular this year.”

“Oh, yeah?” Keith laughed. “Text me when Luis inevitably sticks his head into one of them and gets dried chocolate in his hair.”

“Actually…” Lance stretched out the vowels, tugging Keith gently closer into his side. “Mama dearest called me this morning before breakfast… and she asked about you and what _you_ , my boyfriend, the boy I’ve wailed over at two a.m. on the phone, were doing for Christmas…”

“What’s the point, Lance?”

Lance halted, wrapped both arms around Keith’s shoulders, and looked upwards.

“Christmas tree, huh?” He quirked a smile and—and then just let himself look at Keith, at his curious expression, his slightly tilted chin and furrowed eyebrows. “Man, wouldn’t you like to see the ten-foot-tall Christmas Spectacular tree in person?”

For a moment, Keith didn’t react. Lance bit his lip and glanced away, to the drifting clouds and stars above them.

“I mean, you don’t have to. It’s a lot of people, and we’ve only been dating since, like—”

“I’d love to,” Keith interrupted, resting his palms on the inside of Lance’s forearms. The touch brought Lance’s hesitant gaze down to Keith, who countered it with earnest eyes and a wide smile. “Really, I’d love to see your family. I’m sure Shiro and Adam wouldn’t mind if I came with you.”

“If you want, we can make mulled wine.” Lance waggled his eyebrows, and Keith laughed and shook his head. “Or we can make something minty! Mom has a peppermint plant on the sill, and—”

“I’d just like it if you were there,” Keith interrupted.

Lance froze, then relaxed and tightened his arms around Lance. With a grin framed by a vibrant red blush—from Keith or the chilly wind, Lance didn’t know and didn’t care—he leaned in until their noses pressed together.

“You’re really gonna come for Christmas?”

“I’ve already said yes, haven’t I?” Keith said, but he smiled, too, the ghost of it on Lance’s lips. “Besides, that means my present can be more special than if you opened it without me.”

“What, Keith Kogane gives presents?” Lance gasped.

“Shut up.” Keith pinched his side and he yelped. “I know I’m already the only present you need, but—”

“And now you’re using my humor against me!”

“Shut _up!_ ”

Keith snorted another laugh, slapping his hand against Lance’s chest, and the words almost leaped off the tip of Lance’s tongue. I, love, and the space between them that Lance just couldn’t bring himself to close.

Instead, he let himself stare at Keith, at the way he lets himself go when he’s around Lance, and basked in the warmth of him while the park hummed with trees and the sky with stars around them.

Lance will tell him. And if Keith is coming to Christmas… Well, he pulled Keith tighter into his chest and vowed to tell him then.

 

 

With Adam and Shiro a phone call behind him, Keith dropped the cell back onto Lance’s childhood bedspread and turned around into Lance’s arms.

“They say merry Christmas and you suck for stealing me away from them,” Keith said a little breathlessly. “And, of course, that they’re happy you’re putting me up instead of them.”

“They’re not sick of you,” Lance said.

“Even if they are, I don’t care. They love me anyway.” Keith buried his face into Lance’s chest and Lance let him.

Three words, again. Like clockwork, every time Keith touched him or uttered something like that—something including love, or the like.

“So…” Lance drew out the word, tapping a mindless pattern onto Keith’s shoulder blade. “At any moment, Mom will call us downstairs, and we have to face the aftermath of the first night of the Christmas Extravaganza.”

Keith groaned into Lance’s pajama top. A feeling dangerously close to the amount of champagne Lance downed last night simmered in his chest.

“And we have, say, three hours before the late breakfast and night two of the Christmas Extravaganza. Are you… okay?”

Keith pulled back a little, a hand replacing where his head was and smoothing the cotton fabric. He scrunched his nose, but otherwise nodded.

“Yeah, it’s fine… More hectic than usual, but nothing I can’t handle if you’re here. Besides, Veronica and Marco told me about the first Christmas Eve when you got drunk…”

“No! Nope! Don’t repeat that to me!” Lance cried, yanking himself away.

As Keith giggled, a shout wafted up the stairs.

“Lance! Veronica! Luis! Get your asses down here! And Keith, take your time with waking up. I made waffles just for you!”

“Oh, man. She’s loves you more than she loves us,” Lance sighed, gathering his wits by scrubbing his face.

“Not as—” Keith cut himself off. “She’ll love me more when she opens her gift.”

“And I _told_ you, you didn’t have to get gifts for everyone—”

“Lance! _Vamanos!_ ”

Keith snickered as Lance grimaced as he finally pulled on his sweater and flung open the bedroom door.

“Coming?” Lance gestured to the hallway, where Luis trudged through with barely any acknowledgement besides a dead-tired nod.

“Give me a minute,” Keith said, a familiar sly smile on his lips. Lance squinted suspiciously. “You go. I’ll be down.”

“… Alright. I trust you.” Lance stepped out the door. “Kind of.”

He eyed Keith, who rocked back and forth on his heels, but his mother raised her voice again, and Lance was forced to leave Keith in his room and dart downstairs.

“Good morning, Mama,” he greeted with a kiss on her cheek as he swept past.

“And morning to you, sleepy head,” she huffed. She tried to frown, but a smile filtered through anyway, the same one as Luis, Veronica, and all the rest of the McClain-Rodriguez kids. She gestured towards the living room. “Everyone is already in there. Will Keith, the best person you’ve ever brought home, be down?”

“Keith, the boy who you love more than your own children, will be down in a minute. Come join us!”

She looked apprehensively around the still dirty counters but pursed her lips and hummed.

The family all lounged around the living room, spread out over three couches and the floor. In the center, to the left of the fireplace, was the Christmas tree – six-feet-tall, as opposed to the ten-foot monster propped up in the front room for the festivities. Family ornaments, from childhood pictures strung on twine to baked gingerbread cookies carved with initials strung on ribbon, hung over this one, complete with homemade garlands and candy canes. Luis plucked a candy cane off the tree and dropped onto the loveseat, eyes slipping closed before he could concentrate on the morning.

“Merry Christmas,” Lance said, and a chorus of the same greeted him. Veronica pinched his cheek as he sat down on the floor, leaving the space on the couch behind him for Keith. He pushed away a plastic cup with his toes and settled in to spite her.

“And there’s Keith! Which means we can start presents,” his mom announced. Sure enough, when Lance glanced up, there was Keith, standing sheepishly in the doorway with his arms behind his back.

Lance patted the couch behind him, and Keith dutifully picked his way over the party remnants strewn over the floor and settled behind him so that his legs bracket Lance’s sides. It was warm, comfortable. It was kind of where Lance wanted to stay forever.

Opening presents in his household was a competition of sorts, perfected over years of several small children and a pile of boxes and strangely shaped objects crowded under the tree. Each kid gets a present, and whoever unwraps their present the fastest receives an extra candy piece, usually thrown directly at their face by a grumpy loser.

By the time Lance was down to one last gift to hand over in his hands, the carpet broiled with a sea of wrapping paper and his face sported several gumdrop bruises.

Still, he shuffled to turn around and presented the small box in both hands to Keith, who blinked down at him.

“For you,” Lance offered.

Gingerly, he took the box and turned it around in his hands. The rest of Lance’s family continued without them, shouting about unwrapping times and how to clean up the wrapping paper. Keith tore off the paper with no method or patience, just like his personality. Somehow, Lance still liked that about him. He liked everything—no, he—

“This…” Keith quirked a smile and held up the picture frame. All of them—everyone, the whole gang—crowded onto a beach in California, a picture taken by a surfer bro Lance remembered distinctly smelled of clam chowder.

“There’s a second side. Unfold it,” Lance said.

Keith did, revealing a second photo of just the two of them. Still on the beach. A selfie Lance took, beaming at the camera as Keith curled into his shoulder. The photo reminded Lance of sand, winter mint, and Keith in a million different lights and shadows. Of when he knew he’d want this forever.

“It’s us,” Keith said softly. He trailed the pad of his thumb over the glass, eyes lost in a cloud of… Affection. The same affection, but stronger. He blinked, then set the photo frames gently on his lap and took the box from earlier out from behind his back.

As Lance took the box, Keith slid off the couch to sit beside him on the floor, pulling his knees up to his chest.

“I hope you like it,” Keith said, nerve tinging his voice.

“Honestly, I think I’d like it if you gave me a rock,” Lance said matter-of-fact, which only made Keith snort.

“Then I really didn’t need to think about this as much as I did.”

Lance tore off the last bit of wrapping paper to reveal a small wooden box, adorned with nothing but a simple clasp. He pried open the clasp and it popped open to a purple velvet interior.

And a massive pile of foil gum wrappers.

Curiously, he picked up the first one. On the paper side of the wrapper, Keith had drawn Lance, a pencil in hand and a stern frown.

“Is this…?” he tried to ask, but the words caught in his throat.

Another wrapper. Lance in the sun, weird pointy chin and all. Another. The beach, waves, and the two of them with smiles as wide as the gum piece itself. Another. Night time stars, interrupted by blank spaces and two figures, holding hands.

And tens and tens more, all pieces that Lance recognizes as ones he gave to Keith over the last year. Spearmint, cinnamon, winter mint. A raspberry pie wrapper. All adorned with crude drawings of their memories of the past year.

The year Lance fell in love with Keith, immortalized in gum wrappers.

He looked up, finally catching sight of Keith’s cherry red cheeks and lip caught between his teeth. Keith messed with his bangs, his nervous tick, and looked down at the box.

“It’s kind of dumb, I know, but—”

“I love you.”

The words tumbled out of him, a bluster of tongue and teeth, because he just couldn’t fucking hold them back any longer. His heart thrummed, and his fingers buzzed on the cool wood of the box.

It was Keith’s turn to shut up. His mouth snapped shut, but he only froze for a second before a warm smile unfurled on his lips.

“You do?”

“I really, really fucking do.” Lance nodded frantically. He really, really did. It coursed through him, this rush through his veins directed towards the spots Keith touched him—his knee, his shoulder, Keith’s fingertips where they rested on the outside of his thigh.

“Did you see the last wrapper?” Keith gestured to the box.

Lance dug around to the bottom and pulled out one more. Just yesterday, when Lance tugged Keith’s knuckle from his mouth in the middle of the party and gave him a piece instead.

_I can’t think of a picture for this one. All I want to tell you is that I love you. Thanks for the piece. And for you._

A laughter bubbled out of Lance, and he clutched the wrapper against his chest. Then, with shaking hands, he set the box on the floor and threw his arms around Keith. They wrapped themselves in each other, touch by searing and soothing touch.

“I can’t believe your gum addiction got me you,” Lance mumbled into the fabric of Keith’s sweater.

“Merry Christmas, Lance,” Keith mumbled back.

Lance pulled back until they rested their foreheads together, smiling like fools.

“Merry Christmas. I really love you,” Lance said.

“I got that, you sap. I love you, too.”

When they leaned in for a kiss, Luis sputtered and yelled, and Veronica shut him up with a pillow.

And later, in the middle of the Christmas part, Lance slipped him another piece of winter mint gum. Keith grabbed a pen, drew a silly picture of Lance in a paper hat, and pressed it back into his palm with a kiss on the cheek.

Adam won the betting pool on this one, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Find me on my [Tumblr](http://www.voltronseatbelts.tumblr.com). Say hi! I also really appreciate kudos and comments. If you're part of the HappyChat, I cherish your words and presence, too. Er, merry Christmas!


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